Does Bad Weather Affect Cloud Computing?

Last year, a retired high-ranking official of the Indian government managed to convince a TV reporter that bad weather can actually disrupt cloud based services. His argument was that your computer makes a connection to the cloud (the “physical cloud” that turns into rain) and thus cloud services won’t work as expected in the absence of clouds.

The hilarious video recording quickly went viral on YouTube and here’s short version of the same but with English subtitles.

51% says bad weather can interfere with cloud computing

It turns out that the concept of “cloud computing” is indeed confusing to a majority of users. A recent survey commissioned by Citrix has found that most Americans associate the tech term “cloud” with the actual physical cloud.

When asked what “the cloud” is, a majority responded it’s either an actual cloud, the sky or something related to the weather. Only 16% said they think of a computer network to store, access and share data.

Technically speaking, they have a valid point as extreme weather conditions can result in power outages, floods at data centers directly affecting the cloud services.

And such things have happened in the past. Here’s a video (via @Mikko) of Vodafone’s data center that was hit by torrential rains.